Life's Made of Trouble
by anthrop
Summary: For once it isn't Apocalypse zombies or demons looking for some fun or any of the other hundred types of monsters that have come out to play since it all went to crap. This time, it's humans. (TUE/End!verse mashup, Chuck-centric, Valerie/Dean hinted at.)


_A/N: Written for the SuperPhantom Week challenge over on Tumblr. Prompt for Day 2 was 'TUE/End!verse.' The plan was to have this focus far more on Dean and Valerie, but Chuck decided to take center stage. Shrug! This will not be continued._

* * *

"There's gotta be a thousand of them," Dean whispers.

He doesn't mean croats, thank God for that. If there were a thousand free-range croats practically on their doorstep they'd all be _boned_. No, for once it isn't Apocalypse zombies or demons looking for some fun or any of the other hundred types of monsters that have come out to play since it all went to crap.

This time, it's _humans_.

"Where do you think they all came from?" Chuck asks, his voice tight. Unconsciously, his fingers dig into the soft dirt of the grassy hill the five of them are hiding behind. He hates the holster strapped to his thigh, heavy with a loaded handgun, hates how the weight of it digs into his hip because he didn't tighten it right. He hates being outside Camp; it's too exposed, no fences or secure buildings anywhere. Fuck that Prophet noise, he was just a _writer_ before all this. He's survived this long thanks to stronger men and women. He stopped writing when the visions stopped eating up his skull, but he's still nobody's sword and shield. He's the supply guy, the guy who keeps the numbers. He shouldn't be out here.

"Dunno," Dean replies. "But they're running from something, and I wanna know from what."

Jaeger scoffs. "Nothing but croats from coast to coast, Dean. What else is anybody runnin' from nowadays?"

Dean doesn't reply, but Chuck doesn't like the way he squints.

The valley below is a broad grassy bowl, and every inch of it is packed with people. Men, women, and children, huddled together despite the warm, sticky afternoon. Crying can be heard, and shouting, but for such a crowd it's _scary_ how quiet they are.

They've got that refugee hunch, all of 'em. If Chuck looked any of 'em in the eye, he knows he'd see death. Not capital D Death, _Christ_ no, just the regular kind of death. The red and squelchy kind that takes everybody you ever cared about and mashes them into paste, or that awful sharp twist in your gut when someone's there one day and gone the next and you will never, _ever_ know what happened to them, they're just _gone_. Whoever these people are and wherever they came from, they've seen hell.

Then again, it's practically capital H Hell on Earth nowadays, so they can just join the fucking club.

Suddenly behind him there's a click and a high, mechanical whine. A gun is pressed to the back of Chuck's ahead. A perfect circle of heat digs into his skin, burning his hair.

"You've all got _three_ _seconds_ to open your mouth and spill some English, or I flash-fry his brain." The woman's hand is stone-steady, and there's no hint of hesitation in her voice at all. Chuck whimpers, slowly prizing his hands out of the earth.

Dean doesn't recoil like the others do. He turns his head, slow, and raises one hand. Just like that, Jaeger and Risa stop reaching for their guns. Out of the corner of his eye Chuck sees him look up at the woman. Dean of a couple years ago would be begging for Chuck's life. Now? Chuck knows better. He knows _expendable_ is written all over his face, now that the angels are all gone.

"That's a hell of a catsuit you're wearing," Dean says, deadpan.

The woman's grip shifts worryingly on the gun, but after a few tense seconds the barrel leaves Chuck's head. He immediately flips over and practically crabwalks into Cas' lap. Cas just laughs, patting his arm in sympathy.

She's young, younger then all of them, sporting close-cropped hair too short to frizz in the humidity and practically an arsenal's worth of bulky silver guns hanging off the black straps on her fitted jumpsuit. Red. Her jumpsuit is _red_. She stands out like a sore thumb in the wilderness, but she must not give two shits about cover. She's all curves, but _lean_. Chuck would bet every roll of toilet paper in his secret stash she's been hunting all her life, that she's got reactions like a proper predator, the kind that don't bother gloating and just go for the throat.

She doesn't smile so much as quirk her lips, then holsters the gun. "Alright, that's good enough for me. Now how about you tell me what you're doing up here?"

Her name is Valerie, and she's been hunting for ten years. Hunting _ghosts_. And not like any Dean's ever dealt with, not like anybody's ever _heard_ of. Her guns are all huge and silver and look like something out of bad sci-fi comics, but there's no joke about the _crater_ she leaves when Risa wants proof they aren't just spray-painted water guns.

"Well damn," Dean says once the dust settles. "Where can I get me one of those?"

"You _don't_," Valerie says. "Every gun we got is accounted for. Every single one of those people out there know how to work one, and at least half of them are armed at all times. So _don't_ be making trouble, understand?"

They understand.

She threads them through a dozen camp clusters to an RV in the near center of the valley. Inside it's more insane sci-fi tech, all blinking green lights and slick chrome. Sitting at a fold-out table is a man in his mid-fifties, obviously Valerie's father. He's got a patch over one eye and his left arm is completely _gone_, but he grins when Valerie hugs him and insists on making coffee for anyone who wants it.

"We've rationed everything pretty thin, but you're the first humans we've come across in a month. It's worth celebrating," he says candidly, shuffling around the kitchenette. "My name's Damon, and you've met my Valerie of course."

"I'm Dean. This is Chuck, Cas." He jerks his head at them both. "We're from a camp a few miles away. There's people expecting us back, if you're thinking of trying anything funny."

Damon looks at him appraisingly, his one eye narrowed. "No one would do such a thing here, I assure you."

Dean meets his eye without flinching. "Oh yeah? You really trust a thousand people living in the middle of the goddamn Apocalypse? Your word that good?"

Valerie steps forward off the wall she'd been leaning against, teeth bared. "_Yeah_, it is."

Dean twists to face her. "And why's that?"

"Because Dad's been leading these people for the past ten years through _Hell_ and back!"

"Is that right?" Dean scoffs. "If you think roughing it out in the woods is a bad time, you don't know the first _thing_ about Hell."

"You-!"

"Valerie, _please_." She relaxes at her father's touch at her elbow, but her lip remains an ugly curl. Damon smiles half-heartedly. "Forgive her; it's been hard the past few weeks."

"Tell us," Cas interrupts before Dean can say anything else likely to rile the woman packing sci-fi heat. "What brought you here?"

Damon's face sobers, and he turns to focus on the coffee pot again. "We're fleeing. From a ghost."

"A _ghost?_" Jaeger echoes. Chuck can understand his dubious tone. It's not like he's been a long-time tagalong for all the Weird Shit That Follows the Winchesters. He gets it. But-

"But-ghosts can't move around much. Unless it's attached to a cursed object. Right?" He casts a look at Dean, who nods. Sure, Chuck _wrote_ the stories, but that doesn't mean he didn't flub some details for style's sake. His memory's fuzzy, without the angels there to keep him on his toes.

It's Valerie's turn to scoff. "What kind of ghosts are you talking about? That sounds like nonsense you tell your friends around a campfire."

"Stupid or not, it's true," Dean replies. "Same as salt and iron and burning the remains. Sounds like horseshit, sure, but I've used it all myself a hundred times. So what kinda ghost makes a_ thousand people_ pack up and run for the hills?"

"The kind of ghost that levels cities and slaughter _thousands_ more." Valerie bites her lip, her hands fisting at her sides. "We-we'd been safe for years, but then _he_ came out of nowhere with this-this _power_. I'd never seen anything like it. _None_ of us had. He leveled our defenses in _minutes_, and-" She took a deep, shuddery breath. "Amity Park used to have a population of nearly ten thousand. What you see out there? That's all that's _left_."

"A _ghost_," Dean repeats after a beat of awful, ugly silence. "_One_ ghost took out a whole city?"

"You saw what my guns can do," Valerie spits. "Think I need those to shoot a ghost that can't handle a little _salt?_"

"So-what?" Risa asks. "This superpowered ghost wrecks your city so bad you can't live there anymore? I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but Missouri's just about cleaned out too. Croats are a dime a dozen nowadays."

"So we found out," Damon says grimly. "We've had plenty of run-ins with those-those _things._"

"We would have stayed in Amity Park if we'd figured out a way to beat him," Valerie says softly. "But we didn't."

"Then how'd you all escape?" Dean asks.

Valerie hisses pain between her teeth. "Phantom-he-he just _vanished_. We thought about staying, but the chances of him coming back before we could up our defenses-it was too high. So we ran."

They're only staying in the valley one night. They plan to bounce from city to city, at least until they find someplace that hasn't been completely picked clean by looters and isn't teeming with croats.

"Good luck," Jaeger says flippantly. Chuck can't help but agree. A place like that sounds too good to be true, a real Paradise on Earth, and if there ever had been a safe haven like that these people had already lived there. They'd already seen the end of it.

Dean sends Risa and Jaeger back to Camp to report in and to let the others know that he, Cas, and Chuck would be spending the night, exchanging intel. Intel, sure, plenty of that gets exchanged, but Chuck knows how much Dean likes a woman that doesn't back down. Hell, even if he hadn't written nearly a hundred novels about the Winchesters-and _yes_, he'd know what Sam would do, and _yes_ he'd done his best to help stop it, not like it did any good-he would have picked up on the sparks between Dean and Valerie.

It's funny, in a way. It's literally the _end of the world_ and Dean Winchester is still out chasing tail. Funny, but it's also nice to know some things never change. Some character traits he'd written and written and written remained true, even now.

Chuck sits in a lawn chair triangled between Damon and Cas, sipping a cold one and watching a hundred campfires throw light into the warm night sky. Dean and Valerie have vanished into the shadows, and Chuck thinks _about time_. Cas has got a blunt pinched between two fingers, the smoke sickly-sweet as it drifts away. Damon had frowned at its appearance but didn't comment, only gruffly shaking his head when Cas offered to share with his usual beatific smile.

Usual. _God_. Once upon a time Cas had had a face carved out of wood. Some things never change, but some things-some things changed too _much_.

Still, it's... nice, to be around so many people again. Even for an alcoholic shut-in like him. New faces that aren't trying to tear him a new one are a rarity. Chuck almost can't believe it, but he's... _relaxed_. Yeah, that's a good word for it. He can't say he's been this at ease in a while.

"These 'croats'," Damon says after a time. "When did they first appear?"

Chuck stares at him over the lip of his beer. "Just how isolated _were_ you guys?"

The older man shrugs his stump shoulder. "We didn't really have a choice."

He shakes his head, but gives Damon the answer he's looking for. "About two years ago. It was mass-distributed as a vaccine against the swine flu epidemic. Once the major cities were infected, it didn't take long for things to go rotten. Last I heard, the Croatoan virus was making its way overseas."

Damon releases a low whistling breath. "Who on Earth could manufacture such a thing? For that matter, who _would?_"

"Lucifer," Cas replies abruptly, and then rambles on like he does, sometimes. "He and his army of demons carved a crest of blood upon the skin of this tiny planet, and Pestilence itself laid a foundation of disease and ruin atop the wound. No one bothered to stop my brother once it was made plain the Plan had failed, and my brethren are all gone now. It's just me left." He giggles softly, eyes wet. "All gone..."

Wordlessly, Damon looks at Chuck for help. "Don't mind him," Chuck says hastily. "Y'see, he-uh. He used to be an angel."

"_Used_ to be," Cas repeats, and throws his head back to look up at the stars. "Oh, but I used to be a _lot_ of things."

"Oh," Damon says, nonplussed. "Of course. Of course he used to be an angel." He pressed his forehead into the curve of his forefinger and thumb, sighing. "It really is the end, isn't it? The big one?"

"'Fraid so," Chuck replies.

"What a shame. I thought-if I ever had to live through it, I mean-it'd be... quicker."

Yeah, Chuck used to think so too, before the last dreams told him different. "If only."

Dean and Valerie appear at dawn, when the camps are just beginning to stir. They're both windblown and dirty and bruised. Dean's clothes are rumpled, jeans torn bloody at one knee, and Valerie's jumpsuit has a whole new slew of scuffmarks. Chuck doesn't wanna know, _period_. Cas, meanwhile, just smiles and smiles as he thanks the Grays for their hospitality.

"Where will you go from here?" Chuck asks. The camp is a-bustle with noise, breaking down tents and packing up cars, children's shrieking laughter piercing the air. A thousand people, trekking their way through the American Midwest. It's like the Oregon Trail, but, y'know. With Ford F150s and raging zombie people.

Damon _hmms_. "Forgive me for not explicitly trusting a couple of strangers my daughter caught spying on our encampment. I assume, however, you'll be keeping an eye on us until we're out of your territory?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Dean says, not the least bit apologetic.

"Honesty!" Damon laughs. "Wasn't expecting that. Fine, fine. We'll be heading west, skirting through Kansas City to see if there's any supplies the looters haven't run off with. After that though, who knows?"

"You'd be wise to avoid that city," Cas says, and there's a dissonance that creeps into his voice that Chuck hasn't heard in over a year. He doesn't _say_ so much as _intone_. It's almost like a glimpse to the past, to the angel Cas used to be. It scares Chuck, a little, but he doesn't speak up.

"I think we'll be able to handle a few croats," Valerie retorts, thumbing the grip of one holstered gun. "After that bastard Phantom, anything else is practically a vacation."

The Grays pack up not long after, and Damon leads the caravan up and out of the valley, heading west just as he said. Valerie isn't in the RV with him though. She's patrolling. From the _sky_. On a goddamn _hoverboard_. Gaping, Chuck spares a glance at Cas and Dean, just to make sure they're seeing the same thing he is. They must be, because Cas is wearing that old, bemused squint of his, and Dean-

Dean just looks tired.

"Come on," he snaps once Valerie's lost to the rising dust cloud. "We're heading back."

It's July 31st, 2014. Chuck never sees the Gray family again.


End file.
